Chia-Hung Tsai,
"Policy-making, Local Factions and Candidate Coordination in
Single Non-Transferable Voting: A Case Study of Taiwan,"
Party Politics, 11 (January, 2005), 59-77.

First Paragraph:
Elections are widely perceived as zero-sum games, with
electoral rules dictating the method of seat allocation,
such as 'proportional representation' (PR), 'single-member
simple-plurality' (SMSP) and 'single nontransferable voting'
(SNTV). As players in the game, political parties follow
electoral rules and choose the best strategy for their share
of seats. Electoral rules remain the same unless the parties
agree to amend them, and this process may require a great
deal of time and effort if consensus is to be reached among
the competing parties. Every election is a new game in which
parties and candidates are faced with new competitors,
issues and voters. The uncertainty of competitors makes
candidate coordination crucial to electoral victory, because
nomination errors - nominating too many candidates or
putting quality candidates in less hopeful districts - will
cost party seats. With unchanged electoral rules, however,
parties can devise the strategy which will achieve the best
outcome.

Figures and Tables:
Figure 1. Percentages of seats of political parties,
1992-2001
Table 1. Seats and candidates, 1989-2001 legislative
elections
Table 2. Votes, seats and candidates for the KMT and the
DPP, 1989-2001 legislative elections
Table 3. KMT chairpersons and their rankings in the previous
election by year
Table 4. Logistic estimate of chairmanship on the
probability of being re-elected
Table 5. Determinants of the number of seats won by the
KMT

First paragraph in the conclusion:The main objective of this article was to explain how
political parties, through legislative politics, coordinate
candidates in multi-member districts. Light is shed on the
success of the KMT and DPP's nominations, and how the KMT
gained advantage by using local factions and chairmanship is
explained. Chairmanship is one of the particularistic
interests that political parties can distribute among party
members to maximize seat gains. I also found that
chairpersons are more likely to be re-elected than non-chair
incumbents. Moreover, the KMT has done an excellent job in
equalizing chairmanship, with the exception of the period
between 1998 and 2001. Lastly, this study confirms that the
KMT's seat share directly increases with the number of
chairmanships and local factions. For unexplained reasons,
the KMT failed to distribute chairmanship effectively in
2001 and consequently suffered great seat losses in the 2001
election.